"Japan should have made Ghost of Tsushima"

Quite a controversial statement by Toshihiro Nagoshi, the director of the Yakuza games (and others). When talking about Ghost of Tsushima he notes how well received it was in Japan. He follows it up by saying:

“To be honest, we [Japan] were beaten,” he replied with a chuckle. “Yeah, of course, we’re losing. Honestly, I think that’s a game that should be made in Japan.” But, he continued, you can tell that the developers did a massive amount of research.

He later goes more in-depth about the added details on how the game emulated the Kurasawa films (to the point of even changing the frame-rate) and how it captures Japanese culture.

This opens a pretty interesting can of worms for me though. Infamously the director of Ninja Gaiden 3, Hayashi, lamented that he tried to make a 'Japanese styled Hamburger for the west', later saying that Japanese developers should 'just focus on making good Japanese food'. Ghost of Tsushima looks fantastic and feels great to play from what I played at a friends house. It lacks the combat depth of something like Ninja Gaiden or even Sekiro, but it is certainly passable and entertaining, especially visually. The open-world is generic, mechanically speaking at least. Feels like a typical Western title, lots of checkboxes to find and clear.

I do hope Japanese developers look at the style this game has, but I also hope they don't try to emulate Western gamedesign or storydesign again. Let Japan do what Japan does imo. What do you guys think?

I hope they never start making games like this.

I hope they never start making games like this.

https://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2020/07/23/ghost-of-tsushima-sales-japan/

You know how the industry works.

I think the open world bug has bit Japanese devs for a long time, I doubt GoT is going to lead to any big changes over there. If it inspires people it'll lead to something more like MGS5 or FFXV, which, while divisive, certainly weren't a reskinned Ubisoft world the way Tsushima is